It's easy to think about tinkering around with Arduino, but take more than 30 seconds to look at the platform, and suddenly it becomes daunting: not only do you need an Arduino itself, but to get started you need resisters, wires, LEDs, screens and a host of other components that are almost always sold separately. Have no fear, newbies: there's a new Arduino Basic Kit in town, and it has all the spare parts a beginner could want.

If you've been itchin' for a chance to take littleBits' collection of electronic blocks for a spin before handing over funds, you'll soon get a chance. Well, so long as you're planning a trip to NYC. The company is opening its first retail shop on July 31st on West Broadway in SoHo, giving eager DIYers a chance to take a closer look during the week. littleBits is taking a different approach to the buying experience as well. Sure, you'll be able to test drive the pieces and kits before making a purchase, but you'll also be given the option of buying what you've made or leaving it for someone else to fiddle with. It sounds like you'll be charged for what you use rather than having to splurge for an entire kit. In addition to being able to create your own gadgets, there's a photo booth so you can remember your time as an inventor, too. There's no exact date for how long the location will remain open, but it's scheduled to stay through the holidays.

The best part about the Segway craze is that it's now over. It's time for a ballin' new form of personal transportation like whatever the heck this thing is. Created by fabricator Izzy Swan, this machine is a strange mix of Segway and AT-ST. It uses a cordless 20V drill and homebrew gearbox for propulsion. The leg motion was reportedly inspired by was inspired by Theo Jansen's Strandbeest. What's more, it can reportedly hold up to 370 pounds though, according to Swan, "You should see this thing get down and boogie with just one of the kids on it. It moves pretty quick."

It's the Fourth of July and while that light show in the sky honors US independence, why not shine a little light on our DIY perseverance? To help celebrate this holiday, we've put together a collection of (even more) ingenious hacks that incorporate party essentials: lights, nighttime, fireworks, music, drinks and a bit of wild imagination. Want to watch the celebrations on TV like it's still the '80s? Will pumping up the volume help you fight fires? And just how do you innovate something as simple as sliced bread? DIY fanatics and gadget hacker extraordinaires have already done the legwork. All you need to do is sit back, relax and enjoy the (slide)show.

If you thought building your own laser weapon at home was hot stuff, you haven't seen anything yet. Do-it-yourself fan Styropyro has built a laser "shotgun" whose eight 5W beams are adjustable with lenses, much like you'd adjust the choke on a conventional shotgun to narrow or widen its buckshot spread. As you might gather, 40W of combined laser power is pretty powerful -- and unbelievably dangerous. The gun can destroy everything from balloons to ping pong balls, and there are reflected beams that could easily smack someone's eye. Don't try this at home, folks. It's still an impressive feat of homebrew engineering, though, and Styropyro is hoping to make something "even crazier" before long.

Tired of having to slice up your fresh bread before you drop it in the toaster? Colin Furze feels your pain. The homebrew inventor just built a toasting knife that -- you guessed it -- toasts whatever you're cutting. It ultimately amounts to a modified microwave transformer sending loads of heat to a blade, but it singes your soon-to-be meal about as well as you'd hope. You can even use it to melt butter as you spread it, like a kind of culinary steamroller. Is this practical for your kitchen? Probably not, but there's no denying that it'd be convenient for those hectic mornings when every second of breakfast-making counts.

Where to begin? Would you like to make your own PiRate radio station or Pi Microwave? Does a techno upgrade to your Fisher Price Chatter Telephone sound like fun? You can do all this and more with a credit-card-sized Raspberry Pi 2 Model B at the heart of your project. Element14 has been supporting the professional and hobbyist electronics community for years by hosting online groups and supplying some of the requisite gear. It's shipped a few million of the Raspberry Pi since its 2012 release and to celebrate the second iteration, the company gave us a hefty starter kit -- Ben Heck can't have all the fun. This time around, the Pi is six times faster, has double the memory capacity and if you've already been hacking away with an earlier version, don't fret, its backwards compatible, too. There's a host of partner products from sensors to NFC to WiFi modules available from Element14 and this week's giveaway includes 15 of those alongside the new Raspberry Pi 2 Model B for one lucky Engadget reader. You know the drill, just head down to the Rafflecopter widget for up to three chances at winning.

Before YouTube, before Twitter, before Lil Bub and The Dress, there was the localized meme generator known as public-access television. As an alternative to commercial broadcasting, public access gave voice to local communities, fostering often bizarre, sometimes thought-provoking outpourings of DIY creativity.

It's in the spirit of that great social melting pot that Engadget invites you to embark on a new journey in community storytelling. With the launch of Public Access, we're giving you the tools to publish your opinions, experiences and discussions alongside those of Engadget's editors and some of tech's brightest minds. This is your chance to have your voice heard by millions of humans like you, and maybe...

People can be crazy, yo. But where there's a will, there's a way that can lead to all sorts of fantastic oddities in the gadget world. Today's community of hackers, makers and DIY fanatics oftentimes work together to find solutions to problems we didn't know we had. They develop innovative products (without all that Kickstarter/Indiegogo hoopla) and often provide open-source instructions for anyone with more can-do attitude than cash. In honor of these ambitious gadget hackers, we've highlighted a few of the more interesting projects from over the years, ranging from the practical to the party starter.

The Raspberry Pi was definitely a game changer when it hit shelves at only $35. But CHIP is hoping to make the Pi look positively pricey by comparison. The Kickstarter campaign has already blown way past its $50,000 goal. In fact, at the time of this writing its approaching $500,000. Like the Pi, CHIP is a fully functional computer. The tiny board is home to a 1GHz CPU, 512MB of RAM and 4GB of storage, all of which power a full-fledged (if light-weight) Linux desktop. Even more impressive is that there's both WiFi and Bluetooth on board. It's mostly aimed at tinkerers and DIYers, hence the I/O pins waiting for your attention, but you could certainly use it as an inexpensive general purpose computer... so long as you're not particularly demanding.

It's already evident that most Apple computers aren't designed with do-it-yourself repairs in mind, but the new MacBook takes that inaccessibility to a new level. The crew at iFixit has torn down the ultra-slim machine, and it's clear that Apple took away a lot of repair options in its quest to squeeze everything into such a compact metal shell. The giant battery is glued firmly to the case, while the processor, memory and storage are all soldered to the tiny motherboard. Even the lone USB port is buried under other components, so it won't be easy to replace if it breaks. The findings aren't completely shocking -- Apple is treating the MacBook more as a high-powered iPad than a conventional computer, and designed the system accordingly. Still, you'll want to look elsewhere if you insist on fixing or upgrading PCs at home.

What do you do if you want to 3D print in any direction, but can't buy a pre-made pen like the 3Doodler? If you're Vimal Patel, you build your own. He melded a hot glue gun with a powered Lego mechanism (really, Technic) to extrude filament in any axis. To call it bulky would be an understatement, but it works -- as you'll see in the video below, it can produce fairly complex objects as long as you have a keen eye and a steady hand. And if you want to try it, you can. Patel has posted his Lego Digital Designer file for the 3D printing gun, so it shouldn't be too hard to replicate the invention at home.

The audience for do-it-yourself computing might be larger than you think. The Raspberry Pi Foundation just revealed that it recently sold its 5 millionth mini computer -- not bad considering that the team had only delivered 1.75 million Raspberry Pis as of October 2013, or 16 months ago. The figure pales in comparison to what giant PC makers can do (Apple now sells over 5 million Macs per quarter), but it's impressive for a barebones board meant for schools and homebrew projects. In fact, the team notes that it could be the best-selling UK computer maker "ever."

Want a PS4 and an Xbox One, but don't have the space in your entertainment center? Enter the PlayBox. The laptop-style console mod, created by serial tinkerer Eddie Zarick, crams both systems into a single design, complete with a 22-inch, 1080p display. It's not sleek, but seems perfectly playable despite a few shortcomings. For instance, to keep its innards cool you can't have both consoles powered on simultaneously. Zarick says he's also had trouble with the PS4's capacitive power button, although you can always get around it by pressing the PS nub on Sony's DualShock 4 controller. Unfortunately, the Playbox was a special commission, so you're unlikely to lay your hands on one. Still, if you're desperate for something similar, you could always request a follow-up -- maybe challenge Zarick to throw a Wii U in there too?

A new breed of personal transportation has been bubbling up from the DIY underground over the last few years and it's called the electric skateboard. That's a bit of an umbrella term, actually, since devices range from your standard four wheels and a deck, a snowboard-focused freeboard and unique offerings like Onewheel's balancing act. We sat down with Sanjay Dastoor, the CEO and co-founder of San Francisco-based Boosted Boards to discuss its own electric longboard cruiser and the roller coaster ride from successful Kickstarter to real-world product. One that, in our estimation, is one of the smoothest and fastest rideables on the around, which is why I chose to showcase it as my editor's choice on the Engadget stage at CES this year. We dig into what makes the Boosted Board tick and chat about pricing, available models and the overall enjoyment potential of this economic and fun commuting alternative.

Scanners are really extra-large image sensors at heart, so it stands to reason that you could make a decent camera out of one. Right? Well, Dario Morelli just proved it... and then some. His homebrew medium format camera uses parts from an Epson V30-series scanner to take enormous 143-megapixel photos whose resolution puts even the better professional cameras to shame. Morelli went so far as to repackage everything in a custom enclosure, so the device is relatively portable and will sit on a tripod.

Let's all just be honest here for a moment: Who among us hasn't wanted to strap an array of leaf blowers to our feet in hopes that we could float in mid-air. Oh. No? Well then, at least one person saw the untapped potential of those raucous foliage movers. According to CNET's Crave blog, Austin, Texas-based maker Ryan Craven got caught up in the commotion surrounding the heart-crushingly fake HUVr and decided to make his own using some elbow grease and those off-the-shelf yardwork tools.

Once upon a time it was a mainstay of American education: shop class -- a place where students learned to use common tools to build, create and repair just about anything their hearts desired. This curriculum is all but gone from most schools, but a spiritual successor is worming its way into some Silicon Valley after school programs. It's called TechShop Inside, and it's a 24-foot trailer outfitted with laser cutting machines, 3D printers and an arsenal of traditional tools. Its mission? Teach America's students how to design, prototype and manufacture their dreams. On Friday, the mobile TechShop made its first stop in San Francisco's Sunset district; we dropped by to check it out.

We can't always work alongside a pro to see what makes things tick, and that's where do-it-yourself projects come in handy. They're the entertaining alternative to learning a new skill. In this week's Rewind, we've tracked down a series of kits that were released over the years, which have sought to inform us in fields like electronics, music and the secrets of the scientific world. Join us in the gallery below to see some of the incredible (and occasionally dangerous) DIY projects that have been shared with curious minds.

Some of fashion's most innovative designers showed off their high-tech collections at the Make: Wearables on the Runway fashion show at Engadget Expand in New York. Make: Magazine Contributing Editor Matt Richardson introduced each designer's work, along with Adafruit's Becky Stern and Associate Professor Kate Hartman. Check out some of their cutting-edge creations in the gallery below. Slideshow-242135

Think you need the budget of the military or a megacorporation to make an exoskeleton for heavy lifting? Nope -- all you need is some standard parts and the know-how to put them together. James Hobson (aka The Hacksmith) has finished a homemade robotic suit whose pneumatic cylinders let him curl 171.5 pounds' worth of cinder blocks with relative ease. While it's not the most sophisticated setup, it's only running at half pressure and could potentially double the load with a compressor upgrade. There's a work log at the source link if you're eager to see how this project came to be. With that said, you'll want to be cautious about trying this yourself -- there aren't any leg supports so far, and those blocks aren't exactly harmless. If you're like me, you'll probably feel safer watching Hobson's demo video below.

You know what can teach you Braille and piano a lot more quickly than traditional means? Vibrating gloves, or gloves with haptic feedback, if you will. In fact, IEEE Spectrum senior editor David Schneider was so intrigued by the idea, that he put together his own version to serve as a haptic touch-typing tutor for his 11-year-old son. He admits that his gloves (made using transistors, $14 worth of vibration motors purchased from eBay and long cords connecting them to an Arduino Nano board) aren't as sleek as Georgia Tech's piano-teaching ones. But, hey, they worked, and once he created a program to go along with them, they did their job well enough.

Last summer, Lomography debuted its offering that allows photogs to build their own 35mm SLR. Now, the retro-minded snapshooting outfit is lending a new model of its Konstruktor more film-shooting skills with flash kits. Thanks to a $20 accessory package, the latest version of the DIY camera can be paired with a Lomography flash should the need arise -- if you've already splurged for it and the proper lighting add-on. Those who've yet to take the leap can nab a bundle that includes the disassembled Konstruktor F, requisite accessory kit and a choice of flash for $103-$111 (depending on said selection). Not only can you put together the camera you'll use for to capture that next road trip, but you can ensure those images will be well lit, too.